Chapter 2 - THE SILVER LOCKET

The silence in the restaurant was heavier than lead.

I stared at the woman standing in the doorway.

My mother.

Twenty-two years ago, I had watched a priest throw dirt on her casket. I was ten years old, holding my brother Marco’s hand in the pouring rain, trying to understand why the world had suddenly gone dark. My father had told us she died of a sudden, aggressive illness. He told us not to ask questions. In our world, you learned early that questions usually ended in bloodshed.

Now, she was standing ten feet away from me.

She wore a dark, heavy trench coat. Her silver hair was pulled back into a severe knot. Time and grief had carved deep lines into her face, but her eyes—those sharp, piercing dark eyes—were exactly as I remembered them.

“Mom,” I breathed, the word feeling foreign on my tongue.

She didn’t rush toward me. She didn’t pull me into a tearful embrace.

She took three purposeful steps into the dining room, her gaze scanning the empty tables, the shattered crystal, and the kitchen doors.

“Where is your sister, Santiago?” she demanded, her voice cracking with a terrifying desperation.

I took a step forward, my mind spinning. “I don’t know. She was just here. She pointed at Dr. Kane, the lights went out, and a gun went off. They both vanished.”

My mother closed her eyes. A shudder ran through her frail frame.

“We are out of time,” she whispered.

“Out of time for what?” I asked, my voice rising. The shock was wearing off, replaced by the cold, hard fury that had kept me alive in the Chicago underworld for a decade. “You’ve been dead for two decades. I just found out I have a sister ten minutes ago. I need answers, and I need them now.”

She opened her eyes and looked at me.

“I faked my death because your father was going to kill her,” she said flatly.

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“Your father was a monster, Santiago,” she continued, stepping closer. “When Elena was born, he discovered she wasn’t his. She was the product of a brief, terrible moment of weakness. He told me he was going to use her as leverage in a trade with the Russian syndicate. A newborn baby. I couldn’t let that happen. So, Dr. Kane helped me stage my death. He smuggled Elena and me out of Chicago.”

My head was spinning. “Dr. Kane? The man who was just sitting at this table? You trusted him?”

“I had no choice,” my mother said bitterly. “But Kane isn’t a savior, Santiago. He’s a parasite. He protected us because he wanted something your father had. The ledger.”

I knew about the ledger. It was a myth in the Chicago underworld. A black book containing decades of blackmail, political bribes, and offshore accounts. My father had supposedly burned it before he died.

“Elena didn’t come here tonight to warn you about poisoned wine,” my mother said, her eyes frantic. “She came here to expose Kane. Kane forced her to work for him. He told her if she didn’t help him take you down, he would kill the one thing she loves more than her own life.”

Before I could ask what she meant, the heavy wooden doors at the back of the kitchen violently slammed open.

I drew my weapon instinctively, pushing my mother behind me.

A man stumbled through the swinging doors.

He was gasping for air, clutching his stomach. Blood poured through his fingers, staining his pristine white dress shirt a dark, sickening crimson.

It was Marco.

My brother collapsed onto the marble floor, his knees giving out.

“Marco!” I yelled, sprinting across the room and sliding to my knees beside him.

I pressed my hands hard against his stomach, trying to stem the flow of blood. His face was chalk-white.

“I thought you ran,” I choked out, the betrayal I had felt earlier suddenly replaced by sheer terror. “The video… I saw you over my glass.”

Marco let out a wet, rattling cough. He grabbed my collar, his grip surprisingly strong.

“I didn’t poison it, Santi,” Marco wheezed, his eyes rolling back slightly. “I was swapping the glass. Kane’s men… they spiked the bottle in the back. I saw them. I tried to warn you… but they grabbed me in the hallway.”

He had tried to save me. My own brother, whom I had suspected of treason just minutes ago.

“Don’t speak,” I ordered, reaching for my phone. “I’m getting a doctor.”

“No doctors,” Marco gasped. He reached into his blood-soaked pocket with a trembling hand.

He pulled out a heavy, silver locket. It was tarnished, the chain broken.

He pressed it into my palm, his blood smearing across the silver.

“Elena,” Marco whispered, coughing again. “She dropped it… when they dragged her out the back.”

My mother rushed to my side, dropping to her knees. She saw the locket and let out a broken, agonizing sob.

“Marco,” she cried, brushing his dark hair from his sweating forehead.

Marco looked at her. He didn’t look shocked. He didn’t ask why she was alive.

He just smiled a sad, painful smile.

“I tried, Ma,” Marco whispered. “I couldn’t hold them off.”

I froze, looking between my dying brother and my resurrected mother.